Genoa – «We let ourselves be skewered without any bliss coming from it. But thirteen songs were born in me, annoying and urgent,” he says Vinicio Capossela with small eyes, but deep and shiny like the sea. The tour that accompanies his latest acclaimed album “13 canzone urgenti”, winner of the Targa Tenco, is a concentration of music and intense civil poetry. «But entertainment is also important, it’s gymnastics for the conscience», smiles the singer-songwriter from Irpinia. Monday 20th and Tuesday 21st will be at the Politeama Genovese, at 9pm.
Do you have the ambition of breaking through the darkness of reality with a concert?
«As Walter Benjamin said, “When politics becomes spectacle, often uncivilized, then the spectacle must become civil politics”. But it’s not just this. At the same time I also propose a concert that has to do with the suspension of disbelief, therefore with the world of imagination, because imagination is our great opportunity to transform limits into possibilities.”
The greatest magic?
«The participation of people. The simplification of languages, a policy that is based on fear and not on hope, gender violence, the prison situation, war: some of the most interesting responses to these painful issues, which I dissect in my latest songs, come from civil society and not by the political class.”
She always gives the feeling of being on a journey. The route?
«The concert opens with “On the western sofa”, to which the Genoese musician Filo Q contributed, who will be a guest on the stage of the Politeama Genovese: in that song sleep is exalted, not the one created by entertainment, but the one that brings us it allows you to be dreamlike and creative. All together we will try, thanks to music, to act on consciences and the unconscious. That’s where we will try to travel.”
What does Genoa represent for you?
«The 2011 album “Marinai, prophete e whale” began to take shape in Genoa for a project at the Palazzo Ducale. A fundamental piece for my career. Then I remember a beautiful concert at the Sala Callata del Porto, organized by the Community of Don Andrea Gallo, who left us after a short time. I miss his words. Everyone misses them. In a historical period like this he would certainly have shown us a light.”
She once told me that, when she comes to Genoa, she feels like a cat.
«I hope everyone feels it. When I walk in the historic center I love to smell, get lost, rummage. The alleys are a push towards the poetry of stray animals that everyone, in those narrow alleys, should try at least once.”
What role do you feel you have in authorial music?
«The story of Ariosto comes to mind (the song “Ariosto governo” is on the album), ed.), court poet, who was sent to Garfagnana to be governor. He wrote letters in that period in which he suffered from the impossibility of acting in a concrete way in reality. He had nothing to offer but his words. You need to be aware of your limits. I too have only words left, I only have my words, just like Ariosto.”
Do you still believe in the album as a work of ingenuity and commitment?
«Listening to the songs we love everywhere, thanks to the platforms, is pleasant. Music is immaterial. But at the same time I am fond of the body and the idea that the songs are pieces of something bigger.”
Where can you find the strength to carry on despite the difficulties?
«Paradoxically right within our limits. A dear aunt of mine recently came to visit me. Due to an accident she cannot move her lower limbs. She is a woman full of life, she has given her limit a chance. The greatest stories of strength perhaps arise precisely from reduction.”
And how is this vision transmitted in music?
«On the cover of the new album the keys of a piano are depicted, the ones that remain, the same keys are also at the center of a song in the project. Everything is inspired by the story of two kids who broke the keys of a piano and wrote a song with the remaining ones. I like it as a story and if you want it can also be an allegory: in an exploded and broken world that we don’t know how to manage, just like the piano, let’s try to do something with the keys that remain intact. Every urgency arises from a disorder, from a rupture. This is why I defined my latest songs as “urgent”.
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